Chick Corea. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Chick Corea, Stanley Clark, and Lenny White concluded the Monterey Jazz Festival with a set loaded with truly classic jazz.

Stanley Clarke. Photo by Mike Rainey.

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DJ Logic had a crowd dancing in the Lyons Lounge at the Monterey Jazz Festival. His beats were irresistible. We’d say more, but we lost all journalistic integrity and joined the throngs on the dance floor.

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The audience got a great dose of lively straight ahead jazz Sunday night on the Nightclub stage with the Toshiko Akiyoki-Lew Tabackin Quartet.

Lew Tabackin, Peter Washington and Toshiko Akiyoshi of the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Quartet. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Akiyoshi’s ferocious piano playing was well-complimented by Tabackin’s energetic sax work.

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The average age on stage during the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s performance was somewhere around 70, but they played with a speed and flexibility that most 25-year-olds couldn’t master, and with the maturity and insight that only so many years playing jazz can bring. Throughout the Dave Brubeck Quintet’s set, the music was melodic and accessible without being out of date.

Dave Brubeck. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Brubeck’s music features figures from the past filtered through Brubeck’s unique, modern voice. While other acts pull in reggae and ska, Brubeck extends the reach of greats like Schubert, Rachmaninov and Debussy.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Photo by Mike Rainey.

What Brubeck doesn’t play is as important as what he does play. He could make it all about his piano playing, but he doesn’t. He’s a generous performer, leaving the space for drummer Randy Jones to show off his effortless skill at intricate tempo changes, Bobby Militello to show his fleet fingers on both flute and saxophone, and Michael Moore to show his startling fluidity on the bass. When other artists are soloing, Brubeck’s attention is totally focused on them. He listens to what they play and responds to it, and as a result the music sounds like a conversation being held between instruments.

Dave Brubeck and Bobby Militello. Photo by Mike Rainey.

And then they brought down the house with Take Five, making it sound as fresh and original as when it was released.

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Crowds thronged in front of Dizzy’s Den on Sunday night, just to catch the strains of the Joe Lovano Us Five, a jazz supergroup featuring Lovano on tenor saxophone, Esperanza Spalding on bass, James Weidman on piano, and Otis Brown and Francisco Mela on drums.

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Based out of San Francisco, the Shotgun Wedding Quintet are best described as a hip-hop jazz outfit. They’re members of the Jazz Mafia collective, and they’re not afraid to get political.

The Shotgun Wedding Quintet on the Garden Stage at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Pulling in influences from ska to reggae to klezmer, the Shotgun Wedding Quintet could be viewed as just another novelty band. To make that assumption, however, would miss one important thing: they’re ferociously talented.

Adam Theis of the Shotgun Wedding Quintet plays his bass with his keyboard and trombone. Photo by Mike Rainey.

This talent is best exemplified by Adam Theis, who brings new meaning to the term “one-man band.” Theis would play several notes on his bass, loop them through an effects pedal, then play trombone to his own accompaniment. As if this wasn’t enough, he then used his keyboard and trombone (yes, the physical instruments) to play his bass. One audience member, who had likely just seen Jason Moran play piano with a beer bottle, whispered, “Apparently this is ‘get freaky with the jazz’ night.”

The Shotgun Wedding Quintet featuring vocalist Dublin (R) at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Photo by Mike Rainey.

The Shotgun Wedding Quintet’s dark, sharp-edged, often funny lyrics detail the daily trials of San Francisco life, from the girlfriend that’s “too hip to live” to the frustrations of being used as a derogatory example on the national political stage. Their solid beats had people dancing in front of the stage. They were a Sunday night standout at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

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Sunday night, on the main stage of the Monterey Jazz Festival, Jason Moran premiered his new work, “Feedback.”

Jason Moran discusses “Feedback” at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Before the performance, Moran explained that the work was inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. “He was really able to work feedback in a very musical way,” Moran said. Moran had studied the feedback sections of Hendrix’s performance and sought to reference them in “Feedback.”

Watching the first performance of “Feedback” was absolutely exhilarating. The piece began as something profoundly dissonant and deconstructed, almost Dadaesque. Moran ran a beer bottle along the strings of the piano as he played the keys, changing the tone. As he took a swig from the bottle, the audience cheered. The drummer then dragged his stick and a microphone across the cymbal, creating clashing, screeching noises as the bassist played selected notes as counterpoint.

Jason Moran uses a beer bottle to play piano. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Just when the piece seemed like it would spin out of control into random, unmitigated noise, the piano became melodic and comforting as the bass and drums joined in for something slower and more traditional. But even these traditional sections were punctuated with cascading background loops of feedback. The music momentarily glided into a faster and propulsive, rock-influenced tempo, then transformed back into an accelerated jazz piece. The feedback was a dissonant element in what would otherwise have been a straight-ahead jazz composition.

Jason Moran generates feedback. Photo by Mike Rainey.

Moran switched back and forth between keyboard and piano throughout the piece, occasionally walking up to the Marshall amp stack with a microphone, moving it across the speakers to generate new and surprising tones. Finally, he came to the front of the stage to sing briefly. Then he brought the audience in to sing for the finale, one half singing a low tone while the other sang something akin to a police siren.

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Musicians lined up outside Dizzy’s Den late Sunday night, airline tags already on their instrument cases, just to listen to the Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. The upbeat jazz was a hit; though many hovered outside hoping for a seat, no one in the audience was willing to leave.

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